Amidst the chaos of game preview after game preview at Summer Game Fest Play Days, it was a special delight to experience a game in the tabletop arena, namely the legendary collectible card game, Magic The Gathering. By now, most readers of our Games site probably have heard of Magic The Gathering, but for those of you that sticks to games with screens and controllers, Magic was created in the early ‘90s as an expandable deck-building game. Taking the mechanics of opening randomized packs from sports cards and non-sports of old, Magic was a game that encouraged consumers to always be searching for new cards in a never-ending series of expansion sets. If you’re a fan of the CCG’s Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragonball Z or Disney Lorcana, your game exists literally because of the invention of Magic the Gathering.

Now in existence for over thirty years and well over 100 expansions in the bag, we had a chance to preview a set in their popular line of expansions subtitled Universes Beyond. Sometimes used for small set inserts (Transformers and Jurassic Park), sometimes done as a commander focused set (this year’s Fallout set) and sometimes used for full set releases (such as last year’s monstrous The Lord of the Rings set), Universes Beyond is where the standard fantasy mythology of Magic meets existing and popular intellectual property. Fans get to see their favorite characters in an existing IP ported into a Magic card. Our preview at Play Days focused on their next upcoming Universes Beyond expansion, Ubisoft’s mega successful video franchise Assassin’s Creed.

Our preview allowed us to sample two pre-built decks using cards from the upcoming expansion. One was a red-white deck, the other black-blue. Not surprisingly, the black-blue deck featured a host of new cards using the Assassin creature type. Cards like Brotherhood Spy and Brotherhood Patriarch were low mana cost cards to get action rolling. More than a couple of times we used Hired Blade with its flash ability to drop them in at the last second as a much-needed blocker. Tranquilize helped put creatures out for three whole sets of turns due to the slow removal of stun counters. We even got to play a rare wall creature with the Assassin Den. A better than you think it would be card as a 2/4 defender for one blue and three colorless, but with a special sorcery speed ability of giving another creature a +1/+1 counter and making them unblockable this turn for another one blue and three colorless. There were some cards such as Brotherhood Ambushers featuring the new freerunning ability, but given the ability’s reduced casting cost for the card requiring damage to have been done by an assassin creature or commander this turn, we never quite had the right chain of events or mana available to play the card. This deck, like the red-white deck featured a special one-card fishhook reaching for a powerful creature. The blue-black deck used the sorcery Auditore Ambush to grab the creature Ezio, Blade of Vengeance. Ezio was a pretty strong creature as a 5/5 for one blue, one black and three colorless having the abilities deathtouch and anytime he does damage to a player you get to draw an extra card.

The red-white deck’s fishhook was way more deadly, using the artifact equipment Raven Clan War-Axe. The card immediately allows the player to search for Eivor, Battle Ready and place it into your hand. The equipment itself can be equipped to a creature for two colorless and gives the creatures +2/+0 and trample. Eivor himself is a 5/5 for one white, one red and three colorless but has vigilance, haste and whenever he attacks it deals damage to each other player equal to the number of equipment you control to *each* opponent. Nasty! Expectedly, this deck’s theme was equipment and fast assassin’s to attach them to. Other equipment we found in our games were Headsplitter and a helpful instant called Battlefield Improvisation. Another instant Misthios’s Fury was direct damage allowing extra damage to the opponent if an equipment was in play. In our play with the red-white deck we got a Labyrinth Adversary out early, pumped him up a little, and then used his special ability for one red and one colorless to make him unblockable.

Magic the Gathering’s Universes Beyond expansions have been exciting, fun and super collectible additions to the already successful, venerable game, and this Assassin’s Creed expansion leans heavily into the dynamics that have made the video game series so popular. We can’t wait to play more with this set and see what other great cards it makes available for expanding existing Magic decks with. Magic the Gathering – Universes Beyond: Assassin’s Creed will be available online and at your local game store on July 5th, 2024.